[ceremonious music] - [David] Secretary Norton was an incredibly dedicated public servant.

- [Timothy] At the time Gale decided to run for Attorney General, it was perceived as a man's world.

- In the entire history of the country, there had only been one woman elected as a State Attorney General.

- [Nina] She was the first female Secretary of the Interior.

- [Timothy] The event of 9/11 was a game-changer.

- [Gale] I got a call from Vice President Cheney who said, "You are the highest-ranking person in the line of succession who is outside Washington D.C.

tonight."

[light music] - [Reynelda] As strong and enduring as the Rocky Mountains they stood beside, as visionary as the views of the Grand Plains they looked across, the women inducted into the Colorado Women's Hall of Fame are trailblazers whose work has improved and enriched our lives.

They are teachers, scientists, ranchers, leaders in business, education, religion and the arts.

Women who have been recognized for their many contributions to our state, our country, and the world.

I'm Reynelda Muse, and these are the stories of "Great Colorado Women."

[light music] - Gale has gotten where she is by working hard and by being a good person.

She grew up in an era when we didn't worry about rollerskating with arm pads and knee pads.

We just got scrapes and cuts, and you pick yourself up and get going again.

- Gale was the first female Attorney General of the state of Colorado.

- Gale proved herself certainly as a strong innovator, as Attorney General.

Somebody that brought new ideas to the job, and really expanded the portfolio of what an Attorney General can do.

- When I was running for office, one of my big obstacles was that I am an introvert.

The experience of running for office forced me to stand up and express my opinion.

I know there are a lot of young women that don't really have that self-confidence, but you have to be willing to make a stand.

- Gale is one of the most brilliant lawyers I've ever known.

She's been very active in natural resources and environmentalism, and she developed into a great public servant at both the state level and the national level.

- [Marti] Gale did a lot of very important things as Secretary of the Interior - In the aftermath of September 11th, one of the issues we had to deal with was energy supply, and how to get the United States to not be as dependent on foreign sources of oil.

- She led the department through a very important time.

Many of the policies that she implemented are still at the forefront 20 years later.

- [Narrator] For the Norton family, the American dream wasn't about money, it was about family, hard work, and making your way in life.

Dale Norton was an aircraft mechanic.

Her mom, Jackie, a homemaker.

Together, they instilled in their children the belief that if you worked hard and played by the rules, you could be anything you wanted to be.

Family togetherness was important in the Norton household, especially when tragedy struck.

- My little sister Laura was two years younger than me.

When she was about five years old, she developed leukemia.

She passed away when she was seven and that was, you know, devastating for our family.

My parents never really recovered from that, and it changed me as well.

I had to learn to be more independent.

I didn't have that close connection that I had had as we were growing up.

[gentle music] My grandmother was great.

She loved climbing rocks with me, and we spent a lot of time just walking through the forest, and I came to know the mountains of Colorado, the outdoors of Colorado, wildlife, and to love all of them.

- Growing up in a place like Colorado played a key role in her perspective.

I mean, if you talk to her and see what her passions are, what you see is a person who absolutely loves nature.

- Conservation was always a big thing for her.

In high school, Gale was what we would call a classical liberal.

Her parents, I think, were Republican, but she was very Democrat.

- Growing up in Thornton, every morning I had to go on the school bus over a hill that would let me see the whole Denver area laid out in front of me.

And that Denver area was covered with a blanket of smog, and that made me realize the problems of pollution and start thinking about what I could do to deal with those issues.

- That's one of the reasons she became a natural resources lawyer.

She grew up in Thornton, went to undergraduate at the University of Denver.

She went to the University of Denver Law School.

She was probably first in her class.

- As part of getting ready for law school, I took the Law School Admissions Test.

When I got my results back, I looked at the envelope and said, "Well, I wonder where my result is?"

And finally realized I was having a hard time because it was a perfect score.

- The LSAT test used to be really a bear for a lot of people.

I've never known anyone else with a perfect score.

Gale is it.

- I hadn't really come to the idea of going to law school by thinking I was going to be the next Perry Mason.

That wasn't really the focus that I had.

I'd always been very interested in politics and in policy, especially on environmental issues.

When I was in my last year or so of law school, I changed some of my attitudes about politics and came to have a different philosophy of what the role of government ought to be.

I was very interested in human freedom, and part of that was becoming involved with the Libertarian party, and found a group of people in that party who similarly felt that.

And one of them was my to-be husband, John.

We had a lot in common.

We talked politics, we talked economics.

We ended up getting married at the top of the Aspen Gondola, and he's the one that really has brought adventure to my life.

It's been a great partnership.

After I graduated from law school, I had the opportunity to go to work at a place called Mountain States Legal Foundation.

- Gale represented clients that were farmers and ranchers that had interactions with the federal government or the state government.

- I had really been focusing on trying to fight government overreach.

I was very inspired by Ronald Reagan and what he was doing.

I decided it would be helpful to really understand government from the inside.

- When President Reagan was elected, she went to D.C. and worked for Department of Interior, - Serving as the top lawyer for the National Park Service and the U.S.

Fish and Wildlife Service.

- I was in charge of all of the attorneys nationwide.

That was a bit of a challenge for an attorney who was just a few years out of law school.

Everybody I supervised had more experience than I did.

I really had to dive in and learn about the issues.

- That gave her an incredible grounding in some of the larger issues that she would ultimately manage as secretary in the future.

- While I really enjoyed my experience in Washington, John and I knew it was time to come back home to Colorado.

And I was thinking about running for the legislature, and it was my husband John who said, "You know, what you've been doing for the last few years is managing attorneys.

And where in state government do you manage attorneys but as Attorney General?

You ought to run for that."

- At the time Gale decided to run for Attorney General, it was perceived as a man's world.

- There weren't a lot of women leaders in the legal community.

Law firms in Denver were still trying to get used to the idea of having women attorneys.

- There had never been a woman-elected Attorney General in Colorado.

In the entire history of the country, there had only been one woman elected as a state Attorney General, and so I was fighting an uphill battle.

- Gale really had to break through some barriers.

She wasn't really well known politically in Colorado, and a lot of people thought that a young female lawyer really couldn't get it done.

People underestimated the skill and ability of Gale Norton.

- [Narrator] The groundswell of support for Gale Norton is spreading across Colorado.

The "Rocky Mountain News," in calling for a new burst of energy, endorses Gale Norton.

the "Grand Junction Sentinel" calls Norton, "An invigorating newcomer with impressive credentials."

- I campaigned very hard, and eventually I won the office of Attorney General and ousted the incumbent.

Being Attorney General was a great job from a lawyer's perspective because I got to be involved in all of the legal issues facing the state of Colorado.

- She really was at the forefront of solving some very serious environmental problems.

She established an Environmental Crimes office to go after polluters that were violating our criminal laws.

We had the Cleanup of Rocky Flats, which was a Superfund site.

We had the cleanup of the Rocky Mountain Arsenal.

- If a private company said, "Hey, we just don't have it in the budget to do that."

We'd say, "That's too bad.

You've entered into a legally binding agreement that you're going to get that cleanup done."

- She also developed, I think, really an excellent working relationship with the governor and his legal teams.

Governor Romer at the time was a very effective governor, nationally known, and he and Gale had a very productive relationship, which a lot of people might not have have expected.

He was a Democrat, she was Republican.

- We faced a number of difficult issues, a number of interesting issues during that time.

- As you may recall, Amendment 2 was a very controversial ballot initiative.

- It was essentially trying to deal with quotas on sexual orientation.

Of course, that issue was challenged very quickly.

And as the attorney for the state of Colorado, I had to defend Amendment 2.

- I think people questioned, you know, "Why is she fighting so hard for an amendment that many people thought was inequitable or unfair?"

- I might have one perspective, and the position of the state law was different.

But ultimately the Attorney General has to defend the laws of the state.

- The job of the Attorney General is not to pick and choose the laws that you'd like to enforce.

The job of Attorney General is to defend all of the laws and all of the Constitution.

- She argued the case in the Colorado Supreme Court.

It ended up going to the United States Supreme Court where the state lost that case by a six to three vote.

She was very much involved in representing Colorado's interest in suing the tobacco industry.

- Attorneys General across the country became very interested in the issue of tobacco use, especially by children.

And what the tobacco companies had done to essentially encourage kids to get addicted to cigarettes.

- And while Gale felt strongly that adults are free to choose, targeting kids just isn't fair, it isn't right.

We sued under the Colorado equivalent of RICO, Racketeering Interstate Commerce.

We brought it under contributing to the delinquency of a minor, and under false advertising.

- And ultimately came up with what was the largest lawsuit settlement in history up to that time.

That litigation resulted in billions of dollars going to the state of Colorado and other states.

In 1994, I was re-elected as Attorney General, and received more votes than anyone else in that election for any office.

And so I thought I was in a good position to be able to run for U.S. Senate.

And so in 1996, I started campaigning for that.

I had women who would come up to me and say, "I'm excited.

I'm voting for you because you're a woman, and unfortunately my husband will not vote for you because you are a woman."

- The campaign was difficult.

There was a primary.

That was probably the first ugly primary that I had seen.

- There are challenges for women running for public office.

To this day, there has never been a woman elected to the U.S. Senate from Colorado.

- I think the reason she lost that primary was because she took a pro-choice position on the issue of abortion at the time.

So on the one hand I think she was really, really sad.

On the other hand, it was like she wasn't gonna mess with her own integrity by going with positions that she didn't really believe in.

- After Gale lost her Senate race and was term-limited as an attorney general, she went and joined the Brownstein Hyatt Law Firm.

- She was busy practicing law, and I was busy in D.C.. We didn't see a lot of each other until the 2000 election.

- In the lead-up to the 2000 election, I was a little involved with the George Bush campaign.

I was on his environment committee and met with him to talk about environmental issues.

- They worked together to come up with initiatives and ideas that would be helpful in laying the groundwork for the policy vision of a potential presidency of George W. Bush.

Her efforts were recognized as really contributing to the efforts of the campaign.

- I got a call the day after Christmas from Karl Rove who said, "President Bush would like you to come to Washington to interview for the job of Secretary of the Interior."

I had heard enough about who was being considered that I was actually fairly relaxed going through the process because I thought, "I really don't have a chance."

- What Karl Rove says about this interview is that she absolutely wowed everybody.

She had an incredible depth of knowledge, competency, and she'd been tested in the political and public policy arena for a long time, and I think all of those things together made her a very attractive candidate.

- As I finished up that conversation with the president and walked down the hall out of the meeting room, I heard him say, "Gale, Gale, come back.

Would you like the job?"

- She went out on camera with the president-elect, George W. Bush, and he announced her as his selection for Secretary of the Department of the Interior.

- In the hallways of Interior, there are big portraits of everyone who has ever been Secretary of the Interior.

Going back to 1849 when the department was first established, looking at all of those portraits, there is no woman.

I was the first woman to become Secretary of the Interior.

- She did it based on her ideas and her abilities.

She didn't get it just because she was a woman.

She was boots on the ground, she was out hiking, but she also just had such grace in dealing with the adversity that comes with the job.

- The job of Interior is one that has a tremendous amount of conflict inherent in that job.

There are parts of the department who feel very strongly about protecting wildlife.

Parts of the department that are involved with oil and gas production and mining.

- There was ongoing litigation involving water rights on the California and Oregon watersheds.

The National Park lands had seriously been underfunded and needed a substantial upgrade.

And so it just was really a staggering number of issues that she had to address, come up to speed with, and familiarize herself.

And she also had to assemble a team of her executive committee, her management group.

- I didn't really set out to have more women in positions at the Department of the Interior.

It happened that women who were very well-qualified were our top candidates for several positions.

And so I had the first woman as head of the National Park Service, and the first woman head of the Bureau of Land Management, and women involved in many other top areas of the department.

- [David] Secretary Norton was an incredibly dedicated public servant.

She led the department through a very important time.

- On the morning of September 11th, 2001, I was sitting in my office.

My chief of staff came in and said, "There's something going on at the World Trade Center."

We have to turn on the television."

And as we watched, the second plane came in and we knew that that had to be more than just pure accident.

We had to get the Department of the Interior plan in place.

But as we were starting through that process, someone said, "Look, the Pentagon is on fire."

- She was out on the deck of the Department of Interior Building and could actually see the Pentagon and the flames coming out of the building.

- After the Pentagon has been hit, her security detail grabs her and immediately takes her to an undisclosed location.

It was, I think, the first time since World War II that there had been a evacuation like that.

- [Gale] We were whisked away to an underground location that had been ready for nuclear war.

- And she was there with other cabinet officials, and for a while there it was really bad.

They were getting no information, so they had no idea what was going on.

- In the midst of that, I got a call from Vice President Cheney who said, "You are the highest-ranking person in the line of succession who is outside Washington, D.C. tonight.

You need to stay in that secure location and be ready for whatever might happen."

Now, we didn't know what the capabilities of Al-Qaeda were.

We didn't know what kind of additional attacks might be coming.

So that night, I didn't get very much sleep.

Not too long after the attack had occurred, I visited the World Trade Center site and it was intense emotion to see what had occurred there, and to know how many people had died in that attack.

President Bush's address to Congress in the few days after September 11th was a time when all the members of Congress came together in much the same way that they do for a state of the Union speech.

But this time everybody was unified in remembering that it wasn't Republican or Democrat that mattered, it was being American.

It was a time when everybody in Washington sort of dropped their partisanship, came together, and really focused on the good of the country.

[light music] as one of the functions of the National Park Service, we became involved in commemorating the site of Flight 93, the plane that had crashed into the ground in Pennsylvania, and the heroic people on board who overcame the terrorists.

We went through the process of planning how we could do that commemoration, set aside that land, and have some comfort for the families of those who had perished by knowing that their loved ones would be commemorated.

- The event of 9/11, it changed the way we looked at security at Independence Hall, icons from the Statue of Liberty to the Hoover Dam.

- Gale had a tremendous amount of responsibility for trying to protect those facilities from what might be ongoing terrorist exposure - [David] It became a very big focus in supporting the efforts to address 9/11 going forward.

- In the aftermath of September 11th, one of the issues we had to deal with was energy supply, and how to get the United States to not be as dependent on foreign sources of oil.

- She played a key role early on in the development of what was called the National Energy Plan, and then spent the next five years working on the implementation of that plan.

Many of the policies that she implemented are still at the forefront 20 years later.

- We put together something that we called Cooperative Conservation.

It was essentially trying to encourage local land managers to bring together environmentalists and farmers and ranchers, recreationists, oil and gas people, everybody who might be affected by their decisions, to sit down and find those areas of common ground.

When people sit down at the table and talk, they can find ways of preserving the wildlife, preserving the scenery, and still allowing some development to take place.

We were so enthusiastic about Cooperative Conservation that it spread throughout the federal government.

And ultimately, President Bush issued an executive order on Cooperative Conservation, and we had a White House conference on that.

The day the conference started was the same day that Hurricane Katrina hit, and so our Cooperative Conservation conference was far overshadowed by the devastation of that hurricane.

I flew down to Louisiana shortly after that and really saw firsthand how devastating that was.

[light music] I spent a little over five years in Washington as Secretary of the Interior.

- Gale loved being Secretary of the Interior.

However, she loved Colorado.

- My husband John and I wanted to get back home, go back to normal life, and to work in the private sector.

I established Norton Regulatory Strategies in order to provide advice on environmental, natural resource, energy issues.

Our whole need for energy is very complex.

We need to have all of those sources of energy available in order to meet everybody's needs, and we have to figure out how we can develop the new technologies that will allow us to make those changes in a way that will be seamless for the public.

[bright inspiring music] - [Timothy] What you see is an incredible legacy of her inspiring young professional women.

- Perhaps they would take away by being just hard workers, smart and honest.

- What the inspiration is is to look at her and say, "Huh, figure out what you wanna do in the world.

Prepare yourself to do it.

Don't worry about the made-up obstacles in your way.

Go do it.

And while you're doing that, be your kind and generous self."

[light music]